[Galaxy S I9000 General] kashif2shaikh:
Hello Everyone,

I like most people upgraded my Bell i9000m from Kies to Froyo, only to have it bricked with the "can't mount /dev/block/mmcblk0" error at the recovery screen during boot-up. I upgraded it last week, where it took the firmware from JL8 to I believe JK3 or JL8 (not sure at this point).

Unfortunately I bought my phone from some guy on Kijiji using it on Rogers, so I doubt Bell is going to handle the return or give me any love :)

Anyways, I spent many days long days trying to get it back working, and I found a work-around that requires using an external SD card. and going back to Android 2.1 ECLAIR :)

Steps (This is what I did):

1. Install JK3 stock ROM via Odin (with re-partition at the pit on samfirmware.com, didn't update boot loader)

2. Install K13c speedmod kernel via Odin

3. Insert 16GB External SD card

3. Boot phone to Froyo

4. Reboot to recovery console and wipe data/everything

5. Install JL8 stock ROM via Odin (no re-partition, didn't update boot loader)

6. Phone will boot-up into recovery mode and automatically do wipe data

7. Phone will boot into ECLAIR

8. You will see internal storage of 1.85GB free.

9. Install Market apps - I installed twitter

10. If you remove external SD card, twitter will crash.

11. If you reboot phone without external SD card, you will get rebooting logo

12. If you put external SD card back it, phone boots!

This wasn't a fluke - I was able to reproduce if I flashed other ROMS (XXJPY or similar) instead of JK3.

Background:

Even though the phone can't boot with stock ROM, if I install JK3 ROM + speedmod K13b speedmod kernel, I can get the phone to boot to Froyo, but there is no internal storage (it shows up as 0 bytes available). So you can't install Market apps, and therefore is useless. I can't even mount the external SD card under the Settings app! :mad:

So I tried to log in the Froyo device using adb shell, and what I found is that internal SD card is no longer showing up under linux, and the OS thinks that the external SD card is the internal one. This is probably why the external SD card can no longer be mounted.

I figured out that the external SD card shows up as /dev/block/mmcblk0!!! WHich is the same block device as the internal SD card...so I'm thinking if I reboot into recovery and format SD card, how come it's not working? I even tried to partition the external SD card with android partitions, but still nothing!

I think Froyo is 'smarter' in that it knows the external SD card is not internal (whether it's grepping the device-info for manufacture data, don't know).

But if I go to JL8 Eclair, the Android 2.1 is 'dumb' enough that is doesn't see the difference between internal and external, so formats the external to look like internal.

Once I boot to ECLAIR, the external SD card is greyed out under Settings app, but I get 1.85GB internal storage!! OK I can't access the whole 16GB of the card, but at least my phone is not toast.

I can go ahead an install apps, which will install to the external SD card. But if you remove the external SD card, the phone will no longer boot. If I remove the card and apps are running, apps will crash (case in point: I tried twitter).

It will be nice if others can re-produce my findings. But for now my Samsung Galaxy S has been saved!

Kashif Shaikh